Email Marketing Tips for Targeting Inactive Subscribers

I've been managing an email marketing campaign for one of my clients for the past few years. The database grows slow and steady but it seems it is the same people consistently opening and interacting with the email content.

How can I get the others to participate?

Well, the first critical step is complete, I've
identified those recipients of your email campaign who are inactive.

The point of identifying your inactive recipients is to treat them differently - not to delete them, ignore them or cry over their inactivity. Your goal after identifying and segmenting your "active" and "inactive" subscribers is to spend more productive time on actives and attempt to re-engage inactives.

Here are some things one can do to re-engage inactives:

• Special Offers
  If you are a retailer, for example, consider a special offer such as discounts or free shipping. If you are a B2B marketer you might offer a special white paper that will motivate the recipient to re-engage with your communications.
• Survey Subscribers
  While you are not likely to get a significant response, consider surveying these recipients to help provide insight into their inactivity.
• Update Profile
  Using incentives, drive subscribers to your profile update page where they can change email addresses, update format preferences, demographics and interests. This updated information may now enable you to send them targeted and relevant emails.
• Understand Their Demographics/Profile
  Perhaps a large percentage of your inactives share a common trait. Perhaps they opted in as part of registering for a white paper or seminar or promotional offer. Or perhaps a majority are women, while your content is oriented toward men.
• Try Different Send Days/Times
  If you always mail on the same day or time of day, try some different distribution times (what do you have to lose?).
• Modify Frequency
  Now that you've segmented your list by actives and inactives, consider adjusting the frequency of your sends. If you normally send twice per month, you may want to test sending three times to active subscribers, but only once to inactives.
• Create Different Content
  If your analysis has been able to uncover some common threads among inactives, consider packaging the content differently for this group. For example, a newsletter from a job search-oriented business might logically find many subscribers becoming inactive after completing their job search. For these recipients, the company might want to focus its newsletter content on managing people, careers and the hiring process. Uncovering this type of trend should lead to providing different newsletters or dynamic versions based on a person's profile or stated preferences.
• Try Different Formats
  Test using a text version, for example, that is very simple but with specific links and messaging intended to drive action.
• Test Different Styles of Subject Lines
  If you've used a particular style of subject line, try a different approach with the inactives. Creative subject lines could be one of your most effective strategies in getting recipients to re-engage.
• Monitor Seed/Proof Lists
  Send your messages to proof and seed lists for key domains. Monitor if content or images are causing your messages to be filtered or treated differently with specific ISPs and companies. If problems are detected, consider developing different versions of the messages that may not trip filters.
• Send a Postcard
  If you have your subscribers' mailing addresses, consider sending them a postcard that offers an incentive if they'll update their email preferences and profile.
• Re-engaged to Active Status
  After each email message sent to the inactives, change the demographic status of those recipients that clicked a link to "active." This helps keep your focus on converting the inactives and tracking your success in those efforts.

Here is an extremely useful blog post from Seth Godin where he discusses the efficiencies and inefficiencies of two different email marketing campaign case studies.

What are you doing to re-engage inactives?

Is Viral Marketing Still In Vogue?

Viral campaigns yield the highest ROI... Information about your product spreads naturally, like a contagious disease... only a good one...

I once read up on the 5 C’s of viral marketing:

Community, Compelling, Comedy, Charity, and Contest

Let's talk Community...

We all know that viral marketing in the social media space is all about communities. In fact, I would argue that communities play a larger role than most people think, both online and offline. They can build a brand, kill a brand, make a career, break a career, influence elections, etc. Think about it; from an offline perspective, life is community driven through PTA organizations, church groups, sports leagues, stay-at-home mommy groups, and various school organizations (sororities, fraternities) to name a few. And of course online, you have Myspace, Facebook, Linkedin, Digg, Stumbledupon and hundreds of other social media sites jumping in the scene daily.

Within each of these online/offline communities consumers are talking and having conversations with each other. And, they are sharing opinions, experiences, advice, recommendations and commentary about products, services and companies usually based on real personal experience.

THIS IS VIRAL MARKETING.

The challenge with viral marketing is that it’s not always viral, if that makes any sense... Often, marketers plan for and label their marketing plans as “viral” but 9 times out of 10, it never catches on. It’s the things that just happen by accident that become viral. Remember the Diet Coke and Mentos video? At first, Coca-Cola distanced themselves from the exploding Diet Coke and Mentos viral video phenomenon, fearing it would damage their reputation and brand; however, just recently that have fully embraced the concept and now there are over 7,000 consumer generated videos on YouTube, millions of pageviews, hundreds of comments, and favored by thousands of fans. The community here is not only the millions of YouTube enthusiasts, but also the micro-communities of people and their offline conversations about these videos.

So, while I do believe it is impossible to craft a viral campaign, you can certainly try to influence one:

• Formulate your marketing message. Think about product or service you are advertising and create a message that communicates the benefits and uses of what you are selling. A website is nonnegotiable.
• Make the content on your website sharable. For example, you can allow readers to embed a funny video from your website onto their own blogs. An "email this article to your friend" link is another way information spreads from one person to another.
• Use email as a viral marketing tool. Include a marketing message about your product or service in the tag lines of your emails and also include your advertising message in auto responder emails you send to those who email you.
• Post your content on other Internet sites such as message boards and blogs. However, do this carefully; many forum managers are now aware of this practice and may delete your messages if they think it's spam.
• Incorporate your marketing message into rich media. Video clips and Flash games are very popular on the Internet, so if you have a great idea for this medium your message will spread like wildfire.
• Spread your message off line as well. Tell your friends and colleagues about your product or service and hand them business cards with the URL on them along with a catchy tag line, perhaps the same one you use in your emails.

What are you doing to boost your buzz factor?